Building Effective Mentoring Relationships: Advancement of Mentoring Practice Program for Engineering Faculty Advisors and Doctoral Student Advisees

Abstract

Ha Pho currently works as the program director of the Public Health Informatics and Technology (PHIT) Workforce Development program, at University of Massachusetts Lowell (UMass Lowell). This is a $3million federal funded program to create and train undergraduate and graduate students in PHIT. Previously, Ha helped design, develop and implement the DifferenceMaker program, a campus-wide student entrepreneurship initiative at UMass Lowell for eight years. At the DifferenceMaker, she co-created and managed its Mentor program. She is also an adjunct faculty at the Manning School of Business, UMass Lowell. Prior to joining UMass Lowell, Ha worked for The World Bank in Vietnam for ten years. Her experience included assisting small and medium enterprises to raise financial capitals and to acquire technical consulting services, as well as managing projects on capacity building to industry clusters. She also spent two years working as a project manager for Saigon Securities Inc., the largest Vietnamese securities and investment firm. She has a B.A. in English from Vietnam National University and an MBA from UMass Lowell. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP). Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Research and Program Evaluation at the School of Education, UMass Lowell.